Work Text:
Historians will call them anything but.
“Dugong,” tested Ding Rong, feeling the way his tongue curled around the words. It was a strange sense of jamais vu, pressed against him with the strongest desires. He watched himself in the reflection, a fragment of himself he was not quite sure of trusting, the overlapping thoughts forcing him a hand in his own. He tried again, testing the names of which he addresses the head of his work, settling through his layers of distrust and accidental mispronunciations. The tones of each name he called worked differently, fairing in manners he was not familiar with. But he knew he had once called him by.
Ding Rong paused, catching the way his breath hitched with a pain, shutting his eyes as he prepared himself in ways he was not used to. “Wang Zhi,” he breathed out, aware of the every detail, the way he felt full knowing the very name itself. He kept quiet, silent as he thought, more and more of the feelings arriving in his chest, a piece of how he felt, fragments of himself he wishes he could vanish. “Wang Zhi.”
The name was perfect to him, almost as if he was meant to say just that, to call him just that. He was a subordinate, older than him, and of worse at most – the same sex as him. He felt tinged with regret, with disgust, guilt, all at himself.
For staring at him that way, for acting that way, and for changing when he knew that he needed him most. Ding Rong forced his eyes open, light entering and filling his sight with his reflection, still in ruins and tossed with little to no care. The only person he gave care when in his appearance for was Wang Zhi.
But Wang Zhi was not here.
“No,” he whispered to himself, breath hot as it absorbed into the surrounding atoms. He felt naked, raw, his emotions displayed like cards on a set game, opened face and ready for judgement. He tried to compose himself, thoughts of many and spiral of many collapsing over his thoughts, places roamed to before accompanied by him trailing his each belief. “No.”
A voice tugged in his inner mind, speaking his heart, tearing at him as it brought and bared truths of which he rather stayed uncovered, hidden. He wished to hide and forget of every feeling, forget of every pain, forget of every world. Forget of the person he felt of, he thought of, like a fragment of himself.
Selfless for him, felt as, he was selfish of himself.
To care for him, almost, felt as if to care for himself.
Ding Rong forced himself, hard or not, to stop, to let it all go. Yet it was harsh, harsh to think so, when all those that flowed through his head, through his blood, through his heart, coursing every cell of his body, was pure love and agony for him. He stared in the mirror, to see Wang Zhi's eyes back.
Wang Zhi.
For he was not there, yet always stood still in his heart, touching everything yet nothing, breaking walls yet holding them up, playing with his heart without knowing. Wang Zhi was there, in his mind of endless worrying, in his greed of to keep loving, in his movements of every desire and drought as he continued endlessly to forget.
But Wang Zhi was there.
Stuck with him, eternity, and he knew forgetting him would mean falling in love with him again. It was a curse, bloody to its soul, harsh as it made him deal with the endless drought of self-care. Because self-care to himself was taking care of Wang Zhi.
Wang Zhi became him.
Just as to every fragment of him, there was Wang Zhi, his Emperor.
His and his only.
His.
But history hates lovers.